Would you ever want DC Comics to go back to Pre-Crisis?

[bat39]

While I think DC should move forward, an event, a series of one shots, minis etc revisiting the Pre Crisis DC would be a LOT of fun. 80s setting and everything.

Yeah, I think that's the healthiest way to handle this sort of thing.

I mean, arguably, this is what they did back in the 60's when a few older fans asked whatever happened to Jay Garrick. Instead of rolling the clock back on their fledging universe and bringing back the Golden Age, DC simply introduced Earth Two as a parallel universe where we could revisit those Golden Age characters.

[witchboy]

I am kind of surprised DC hasn't done more with Earth 1 in all these years. An Earth 1 event I think would be really popular and successful.

[shooshoomanjoe]

The problem with this is that what made the 80s so much fun were the creators and most aren't working in the industry anymore.

[The Darknight Detective]

The problem with this is that what made the 80s so much fun were the creators and most aren't working in the industry anymore.

The audience was also still mostly kids/teens back then, so that's a problem for both pre-COIE and DCU fans who want to go back to the past. Today's audience is not going to put up with it, at least in the same way the earlier fans did.

[wonder39]

I don't think they should go back. To me, that was a whole ' nuther Earth. They should, however, build upon what Doomsday Clock set into place ( that "events" didn't destroy what came before , but instead splintered off a new Earth) instead of this Death Metal garbage of everything being in continuity, which makes no sense.

At least with a variety of Earths, one can revisit the previous continuities. Do I need the current Wonder Woman to have lived the very different lives of her previous continuities? No, that's insane and makes no sense. Do i want to see the various Wonder Women of various Earths interact every now and again? Yup.

[I'm a Fish]

I don't think they should go back. To me, that was a whole ' nuther Earth. They should, however, build upon what Doomsday Clock set into place ( that "events" didn't destroy what came before , but instead splintered off a new Earth) instead of this Death Metal garbage of everything being in continuity, which makes no sense.

At least with a variety of Earths, one can revisit the previous continuities. Do I need the current Wonder Woman to have lived the very different lives of her previous continuities? No, that's insane and makes no sense. Do i want to see the various Wonder Women of various Earths interact every now and again? Yup.

Yeah, it gets death metal’s new status quo continuity confusing the more I think about it @.@

Like, what about characters who have widely different backstories and personalities throughout DC’s continuity? (Like WW herself)

But I’m guessing it’s going to work how Marvel works and they’ll just dig up what’s convenient.

[mathew101281]

Certain elements of the pre crisis world I like, but I’m a post crisis guy at heart. I feel the post crisis DCU ( especially from about 1997 to about 2003 DC ) were some of DC’s best years. It was late enough that some of the excesses of the early 90’s spectator boom had died away. But not so late that it was affected by a lot of the destruction that the New 52 brought.

[SiegePerilous02]

I think some of the more popular/best things that came in the 90s could have worked in a DC continuity that never had COIE. Like, Superman dying and coming back to get married to Lois doesn't necessarily require the post-COIE reboot to work, and it actually being mired in 90s era plots/characters (clones of Lex, Matrix Supergirl) that haven't stood the test of time actually drags it down. Kon-El Superboy and the rest of the YJ generation (included expanded Bat-family members like Cass and Steph) could have existed just fine as well in an Earth-1 canon that just continued to evolve naturally.

I think the only thing we'd miss out on is the JSA and their legacies interacting on the main Earth with other characters, and how much of a deal breaker that is depends on how invested you are in the JSA (personally, they don't elicit strong feelings from me either way). But even so, Wally West for example would still inherit Barry's mantle as the Flash.

[Jim Kelly]

I think the only thing we'd miss out on is the JSA and their legacies interacting on the main Earth with other characters, and how much of a deal breaker that is depends on how invested you are in the JSA (personally, they don't elicit strong feelings from me either way). But even so, Wally West for example would still inherit Barry's mantle as the Flash.

One of the things I loved about Earth-Two (and also the Legion in the 30th century) is it allowed the characters to exist in real time. People grew older, others were born, some died. Once they put Earth-One and Earth-Two together--two different worlds with different comic book logic--they had to warp reality to make it all fit together in the same continuity.

Now one wonders if Earth-Two had continued would they have allowed the Infinity, Inc., characters to age and change and would they have introduced new generations of characters?

I love John Byrne's GENERATIONS for this. That idea of characters existing in real time is something I often think about.

People say that without Crisis something like the James Robinson STARMAN could not have existed. I don't know. It would have been different, but maybe it would have been even better if Jack Knight existed on a world where real time was the rule. His stories are set in real time--so it would have been easier for Robinson to exploit that idea to its full potential--without having to make his series fit with the continual present tense of the mainstream universe.

[Alpha]

I think the only thing we'd miss out on is the JSA and their legacies interacting on the main Earth with other characters, and how much of a deal breaker that is depends on how invested you are in the JSA (personally, they don't elicit strong feelings from me either way). But even so, Wally West for example would still inherit Barry's mantle as the Flash.

Even that isn't true since we could have plenty of stories set in the past.

[Sandy Hausler]

Would you ever want DC Comics to go back to Pre-Crisis?

There are good and bad scenarios with doing this. The good is that there is a strong foundation of history to build on. The bad is that all the problems DC had before would still be there.

Yes or No?

The answer, of course, is yes. There were no problems. The fake one -- that comics readers couldn't understand multiple earths was bogus. Of course, that's just my opinion.

[SiegePerilous02]

The answer, of course, is yes. There were no problems. The fake one -- that comics readers couldn't understand multiple earths was bogus. Of course, that's just my opinion.

Yeah in hindsight there doesn't seem to be any confusion among the multiple Earths stuff. It seems that way to me, a reader who wasn't even alive at the time of COIE, but also seems to be the general consensus of some of the readers on here who are old enough to have been around at the time of COIE.

I think there were inconsistencies, naturally, but nothing as across the board headache inducing or infamous as the stuff we got in the aftermath (like Donna and the Hawks). Rebooting part of the shared universe but not others while radically altering the whole set up created the very "confusion" issue it was allegedly created to solve. They needed a big, eye catching event and overhaul of several books to dig them out of the hole they were in, but it really doesn't seem the continuity stuff ever needed to happen.